Seattle Mystery Bookshop

Free Shipping

 

We are offering free shipping for a limited time this holiday season! On qualified orders placed through the website, by phone or e-mail.

- December 1^st - 15^th

- Media Mail Only US Only - International & Canadian Orders Don’t Qualify

- On Orders $75 or more before tax.

- On Books Currently In Print - Mystery or Non-Mystery they just have to be currently available or a collectible we have in stock - Not applicable to pre-orders.

- We cannot guarantee delivery before Christmas - Especially if shipped to Hawaii or Alaska

A Sale!

We are no longer going to stock audio books (going forward they will be by special order only).

So all our audio books (CDs, those currently in stock only) will be on sale for 30% off.

These we can ship, so feel free to order these from wherever you are! For a list please e-mail us, as they are not on the website.

Ever Wonder What Authors Read?

Small Business Saturday, we’ve got a couple of volunteer booksellers coming in!

They will be here to offer their book recommendations and literary services, so do make a point of coming in on November 30^th and utilizing the help of our Specialist Booksellers!

Urban Waite (in the morning)

and

Kevin O’Brien (in the afternoon)

Plus Sam Siciliano Signing The Grimswell Curse at Noon!

Does This Story Make Sense?

We've all read enough crime and mystery stories to be familiar with the stock characters, the motives, the plot twists and the clues when we see them. We are all also used to a mystery or crime novel making sense. The whole point is that by the end of the book all is explained, you know what happened, who did what, and why. In the parlance of the mystery world, the story has to be 'fair' - it has to make sense, it has to be understandable once you know the solution, if you haven't figured it out by yourself. If it doesn't make sense, if it isn't logical and believable...

Here, then, are some simple but major problems with a famous murder's narrative and why the standard solution to crime is full of plot holes and internal contradictions:

[The story is that the victim was riding in an open car and he and another occupant were shot by one rifeman from behind and above. The "authors" referenced below are the ones writing our story.]

 - According to the first medical personnel who saw the victim, one man was shot in the front of the throat and it was an entrance wound. The accused assassin was behind and above the vehicle. The authors insist this was actually an exit wound.

 - According to medical personnel, the victim was also shot in the back and this wound was so shallow that one doctor was able to feel the end of the bullet track with his little finger. This wound, according to the authors, was caused by a bullet that went on to emerge from the victim's throat and go on to cause grievous wounds in the second victim.

 - According to the authors, a single bullet caused seven wounds in two adult men, traveling through muscle and bone, and was found virtually intact. However, metal fragments removed from the second victim (and not all of the fragments were removed) added up to more metal than was missing from the nearly-pristine bullet.

 - The shooter was said to have fired three shots, two of which hit the victims. No other marksman, civilian or military, was able to match what the authors said the rifleman did.

 - The authors say the shooter fired from one window, ran to the opposite corner of the building to hide the rifle and then ran down 5 flights of stairs (the elevator was not working) and into the lunch room where he was confronted by a policeman just moments after the shooting. The alledged assassin was described as 'normal', not out of breath or sweating. Other employees walking down the same stairs did not see the alledged gunman.

 - A motorcycle policeman, riding escort behind and to the left of the limo at the time of the 3rd shot, was hit with so much material from the vicitm, and at great force, that he at first thought he himself had been shot. Again, the victim was in front of the policeman and to his right while the authors write that the rifleman was behind them both and over their right shoulders.

 - Many of the witnesses described the car in which the victims were riding as having slowed dramatically during the shooting, if not stopping altogether, but the amateur film of the crime - taken as gospel and used for measurments and timing for the crime - does not show the vehicle slowing or stopping. The authors do not explain it.

 - A city policeman raced to the area where he believed shots had originated and was stopped by a man who showed him identification from a government agency. This man told the city cop that there was nothing going on is this area. According to this government agency, none of their agents were stationed in this area. The authors do not explain this.

 - There was a second murder after the sniper shot at the car. A few miles away, a patrolman was shot by a suspect said to be the same rifleman. At that crime scene, as is standard procedure, a detective marked the shell casings from the handgun used in this crime. The shell casings in custody do not show those markings. The authors of the story do not explain this.

If you were reading a novel that had these many oddities that were unexplained (and this is just the tip of the iceberg), what would you think of it? Would you even finish it? If you did, would you think the author knew what they were doing or were playing fair? As a mystery or crime story, would you think it was very good?

We know we wouldn't be able to sell it!

Blind Date With a Book Is Coming Back!

For Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Sunday and Monday, (11/29 - 12/1)

We’ll have our table set up again with stacks of brown paper bags filled with Advance Reader Copies (and some hardcovers, damaged and not, and 2 bags of audio books on cassettes) – some mystery, some not.

Available to folks who spend $10 or more.

The same rules apply as last time: you’ve got to come in to get them (no shipping, sorry!), and no peeking!

Big Daddy

Chandler? Hammett? Again what would you read when drinking this....

Who Would You Read While Drinking This?

Do you ever have the insane urge to match your drink to your book? Like drinking Ginger Ale & Bourbon when reading Phillip Marlowe? Or pouring yourself a scotch when Sam Spade does? Sipping Pappy Van Winkle (bourbon) while watching Longmire and Lucian Connelly play chess?

Well we have found an interesting beer to match up with the hardboiled detective genre....

P.S. We are not selling beer in the shop.....this was just too cool no to share!

A Great Gift Idea!

We at SMB strive to keep you fully informed about books we love, and one of us...well, fell on her sword to see how the  A to Z, the Penguin Drop Caps series collection of 26 unique hardcovers—featuring cover art by type superstar Jessica Hische (who evidentially is a pretty cool chick in the art & design community) -- really looks. And the answer is: FANTASTIC!

The pictures on the website and in catalogues didn't seem to do these edition justice, so the shop's  unnamed Jane Austen fan purchased a copy (well another, or specifically her 8^th version) of Pride And Prejudice.

Even these pictures don't do the edition justice (but are a bit better than the website's versions), the colors are more vivid and the paper is good quality and weight, the binding is cloth and there is no dust jacket.

They are even putting out a mystery edition, The Greek Coffin Mystery by Ellery Queen! If you are looking for a great gift (and can give us some lead time to special order your book) I highly recommend this series! Click here for the entire list.

Playing Clue

Mrs. Lavender, in the Office, with the Lead Pipe?

Gettin' Ready for JA and JP

Got in our copies of the new JA Jance, Second Watch, her new novel with JP Beaumont. Also got in the new reissue of her book of poetry, After the Fire. Not to mention Ring in the Dead, her new novella, a Beaumont mass market original.

Then besides the Wall of Jance, there is the Ledge of Reserves - the copies to be mailed out to her fans around the planet.

Gettin' Ready for tomorrow's signing with JA Jance

Going to be another Big Beaumont Blow Out!

Poirot Is Coming Back

September 3rd, 2013, The Times of London

"Hercule Poirot was laid to rest 39 years ago when Agatha Christie killed him off with a heart attack at the end of Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case, but the Belgian detective will return next year in a new adventure authorised by the author’s grandson.

Mathew Prichard, whose grandmother gave him the royalties to her play The Mousetrap on his ninth birthday, granted permission for a “continuation novel” by Sophie Hannah, a poet and thriller writer."

September 3rd, 2013, The Guardian

"There are a few clues to exercise the little grey cells – it will be set vaguely in the late 1920s, after the shocking French train strangling business and before the well-timed fireworks at End House in Cornwall; and there will be no Captain Hastings. It is bound to have a twist and it will certainly be the first and perhaps only Poirot book not written by Agatha Christie.

The author's estate and publisher HarperCollins has announced plans to follow the examples of James Bond and Sherlock Holmes by reviving one of British fiction's most-loved characters in the hands of a new writer.

Sophie Hannah, the bestselling writer of contemporary psychological crime thrillers, is to write a new Poirot novel 93 years after Christie first introduced him in The Mysterious Affair at Styles and 38 years after she killed him off in Curtain.

Hannah admitted feeling nerves. "Anyone who wasn't daunted by a project like this would have to be insane," she said. "Agatha Christie is the greatest crime writer of all time and it is a huge, huge honour for me to be the person chosen to do this. I do have a sense of trepidation but I don't think I'd be able to write the best possible book if I didn't, if I was at all complacent about it. The fact I wake up every day knowing I have this incredibly important mission to fulfil will hopefully make me write a better book."

Hannah said she'd had a crime plot twist idea for about two years but had not been able to make it work in a contemporary thriller – but it could work, she hoped, in a Poirot-esque detective novel.

She won approval after presenting a detailed 100-page outline to the publishers and Christie estate; the book, yet to be titled, is to be released in September 2014."

Jake Dickey Design

As a class project at the Seattle Art Institute, JB's son Jake worked up a new logo for the shop. Nice to have a spare if we need a new one!

©Jake Dickey

Where everybody knows your name

I think probably the most stressful thing about being on a book tour (besides leaving your iPhone charger in the hotel room in San Francisco, and then housekeeping there tells you to just borrow one from housekeeping at the next hotel, but then the hotel in Portland says no, they don't give them out because they get stolen, and then so when you get to Seattle you're nearly out of juice...) is being worried that the stores don't actually know who the hell you are, you're just Author #425 for the year, or whatever, and you stumble in and sign and then stumble out again into the blinding light of an uncaring publishing universe.

But here I am at SMB where not only do they have my new book on sale (COUNTDOWN CITY, in which Det. Henry Palace is solving a missing-person case three months before the world ends), but they also have my previous novel (THE LAST POLICEMAN, in which Palace is solving a murder, eight months before the world ends), and my mystery novel for kids, THE SECRET LIFE OF MS. FINKLEMAN. So they know who I am, they know my books, and I've actually had the sublime pleasure of watching Fran here hand-sell a dozen or more copies of my books. With friends like this, who needs a working phone?

Ben

And here's Ben winning and being presented with the 2013 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original

 

Something Funny for the Late Afternoon

From Disorder in the Courts, things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and published by court reporters.

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?

WITNESS: He said, 'Where am I, Cathy?'

ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?

WITNESS: My name is Susan!

_______________________________

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?

WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.

____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?

WITNESS: No, I just lie there.

____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?

WITNESS: July 18th.

ATTORNEY: What year?

WITNESS: Every year.

_____________________________________

ATTORNEY: How old is your son, the one living with you?

WITNESS: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.

ATTORNEY: How long has he lived with you?

WITNESS: Forty-five years.

_________________________________

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?

WITNESS: Yes.

ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?

WITNESS: I forget..

ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot? ___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?

WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?

____________________________________

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he?

WITNESS: He's 20, much like your IQ.

___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?

WITNESS: Are you shitting me?

_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?

WITNESS: Yes.

ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?

WITNESS: Getting laid

___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: She had three children , right?

WITNESS: Yes.

ATTORNEY: How many were boys?

WITNESS: None.

ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?

WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney? ____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?

WITNESS: By death..

ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?

WITNESS: Take a guess.

___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?

WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard

ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?

WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I'm going with male. _____________________________________

ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?

WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Doctor , how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?

WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight. _________________________________________

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?

WITNESS: Oral...

_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?

WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 PM

ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?

WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished.

____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?

WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?

______________________________________

And last:

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?

WITNESS: No..

ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?

WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.

ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?

WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law

The Brave New World of E-Books and Self-Publishing

Two bits of news caught our eyes recently:

Self-Published Ebook Sales Reach 20% of Genre Market In 2010, the US published 328,259 printed books, the UK 149,400. It is hard to find data on book publications in 2011 but, according to Bowker (they're the outfit that assigns the individual identifying number - the ISBN - to each book), since 2006, self-published books have risen 287%. Some 87,000 or so e-books were self-published in 2011 (some items may've been counted twice but many self-published e-books also lack ISBNs, so the number is 'fluid'). This figure is for the US only, but we can assume that the rest of the English-speaking world is holding up their end of the racket. 

The Bowker article notes that in 2011, Amazon alone released 58,412 self-published works, "39% of all self-published print books." Further, "Smashwords was the largest ebook producer, accounting for 40,608 titles, or 47 percent of all self-published ebooks." Add those two figures and you get 99,021 self-published books by these two major players alone. Do the math to figure out what part they didn't produce (the 61% that Amazon didn't release equals 91,362, and the 53% that Smashwords did not produce comes to  45,792) and you get 149,774 self-published print books and 86,400 self-published e-books, or, if this math is correct, in 2011 there were 236,174 self-published titles. Give or take.

Then there was this essay by Barry Eisler, also on The Guardian's webiste: The Digital Truths Traditional Publishers Don't Want to Hear where he once again touts the advantages of e-books and self-publishing over what he calls 'legacy' publishing - meaning the system of publishing that gave him his start.

From what we hear, Eisler has done very well since he walked away from a fat contract with a legacy publisher to go on his own and with Amazon. We know of many authors for whom this route has not only become a stream of money but the only way they can continue to publish. They include nationally and internationally known writers, award winners - names you'd know, many local. The traditional NYC publishers have turned away from what is known as the 'mid-list' author (as opposed to the novice novelist or the mega-seller), no longer giving them contracts that allowed them to live on their writing and letting their older books go out of print. These backlist titles, if they have the publishing rights to them, can become a source of steady money as the books are complete and simply need to be converted to digital files. No one begrudges them this. They ought to be able to make money on their work.

We're just crabby that the major publishers are so myopic as to let these writers go so that we can no longer have their books to sell.

But here's the thing about someone like Barry Eisler: he launched himself into this digital world when he was already an established author. He didn't get to where he is by using that system from the start. Yes, he's done well selling his books on-line as digital files. Good for him. But would he be where he is had he not benefitted from the efforts of the 'legacy publishing' system he so easily dismisses?

Go back to the figure of quarter of a million self-published titles in 2011. We have to figure that the number of self-published books continues to grow each year. So maybe there were not as many in 2010, and maybe a lot more in 2012. And we're half-way through 2013, so...

What we would like to see is Barry Eisler conduct what we refer to as a 'science experiment': Publish a new work under a pseudonym and keep it a secret for a year. Tell no one that you've done it, do nothing to draw attention to it as a Barry Eisler novel, in no way promote it as Barry Eisler work, or allow it to be connected to you - hell, even lie and deny it is yours if someone asks...Do everything you can to keep it just another self-published work by an author no one has heard of. In other words, launch this as any other unknown author just starting out would have to do.  

At the end of that year tell us, how did it sell?

Will readers find it among the other few hundred thousand other newly-released self-published works? Can he be successful from scratch, without the help of his reputation and name and without the publicity machinery of a 'legacy publisher'?

That would be an interesting experiment.

There's always one in a crowd

Afer our strange experience with the Seattle Police today, the 'granola bar bomb', the covereage in the blogosphere and on news blogs, you really shouldn't be surprised that some nitwit in the crowd has to demonstrate how dullwitted and mean they are.

This evening, the shop received this message from [email protected] who thought it fair to to pick on someone he don't know about something he know nothing about:

After reading the news reports about her call to the police, I concluded that Amber is an idiot...tell her to get a life...really ..a granola bar?

To which I replied:

Thanks for chiming in, John. For the record, the street was blocked off when she turned the corner from 2nd. The cops were already there long before her bus arrived downtown. According to the cops, they've seen a lot of strange bombs but this one was strange and unsettling due to the presentation (arrayed on a clean piece of paper). Amber happened into the events, she didn't start them.

So that John wouldn't feel alone, "P O" at [email protected] had this to say:

 your famous!  many people are laughing at you on infowars.com & its understandable.

I commented with this:

 "that couldve been much much worse..
a bomb that size , exploding & sending granola wrapper shrapnel in every direction
is something we all need to look out for."

         PO

To which I replied: "you're, not your"

People who need to send such messages to a stranger in order feel important and witty ... well let's just hope they don't vote or procreate.

JB

Mr. Lovesey's Visit: Books, Baseball and BBQ

As you know, we're deadly serious here.

To prove that, here are some photos of Peter Lovesey's first ever signing at Seattle Mystery Bookshop.

First up, the table, full of his books, waiting for him and his fans:

Signing one of Leon's baseballs (probably the first time for Peter, we think):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two grand ol'Men of Mystery, shop founder Bill Farley and author Peter Lovesey:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The lunch tableb - Dianna, Bill, Peter and Jim - BBQ chicken sandwich for the author

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Damn - do we know how to show an author a grand time or what!

Carl Hiaasen is Coming!

Tues, June 25, 1-2pm, Carl Hiaasen signs Bad Monkey (June, Knopf hc, $26.95). Well, as usual, there really is no way to succinctly note a Hiaasen plot and this one is no different: a cop on Health Inspector duties who is hoping to get hired by the Key West department, a kinky medical examiner, a human arm in the freezer and the ‘twitchy’ widow of the owner, a vivacious voodoo witch, an idiotic and greedy developer and - oh yeah - a devious, talented and troublesome monkey. Sounds like the expected and standard Hiaasenian lunacy!

[Please note: Carl will be here just one hour. We’ll have lots of reserves and we cannot guarantee that all of your older copies can all be signed. If you do want to get some signed, figure out ahead of time which ones are the most important to be signed. And, of course, you must buy the new book here in order to get any older copies signed. Amazing how many people don’t understand that courtesy…]

RESERVE YOUR SIGNED COPY NOW!